From The Diary of a Convict

They handcuffed me and shoved me into the back of the police van. The newspapers would be flashing my name by tomorrow; a few news channels would provide a two minute insight into my story. And of course, considering the way the police broke into my flat in the middle of the night, it had attracted quite a lot of audience from the neighbourhood. The spotlight was on me, finally.

This reminded me of a promise I had made to my mother about three decades back. I was a ten-year-old then, and pointing to the photograph of someone being felicitated in the newspaper, I had said to her that I would make it to the headlines someday. My brother had a similar obsession of being in the newspapers, but he never made it past the ‘Obituary’ column.

Coming back to me, I am a balding, forty year old man. My wife left me fifteen years ago. So, I basically live all by myself. I am convicted of ‘women trafficking’. And I accept all the charges filed against me. Under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, I can be imprisoned for duration ranging from seven years to serving a life imprisonment, and I will be slapped with a fine. I intend to end my life in prison, now that my obsession of making it to the front page of various newspapers has finally been satiated.

Now that I plan to die anyway, I might as well tell you how it all began. These days, women think that they are way too smart; they think that they are at par with the men. Personally, I detest this sort of mentality.

After my wife left me, I was heart-broken. I had turned into a drug-addict, carrying bottles of sleeping-pills with me all the time. One day, I boarded a train and decided to get off wherever I felt like, and leave it all upon destiny. A little while later, a girl, in her twenties, came and sat in the berth adjacent to mine. She was an extrovert, and I was in no mood to converse. So, I merely listened to whatever she babbled about. At the end of two hours, she was done babbling about herself, and I had come to know all the basic details about her.

It was then that I was struck with an idea. The way she had been talking to me, the people sitting even remotely close to us assumed that I was an acquaintance of her. I slipped a couple of pills into her water bottle while she had been to the washroom.

As the train screeched to a halt at the next station, I stood up, tugged at her hand and said,” Let’s go. We need to get down here.” She looked at me, confused.

I began to pull her, and she created a scene. The sleeping-pills had left her in an inebriated state, but were not enough to drive her into unconsciousness. I told the people that she was my mentally unstable niece, and that I needed their help in getting her off, so as to take her home. A majority of them trusted me, and helped me get down along with her.

By then, she had been struggling to keep her eyelids open. I took her to a lodge in the vicinity of the station. By the next morning, I had arranged for her to be sold off. I had to remain incognito for a long time, as her family would definitely initiate a search for their missing girl. That was where it all began.

The police have been beating me up and pestering me with questions for almost too long. I have had enough of that. See the knife beside my prison inmate’s bed? That would help me tonight in ending it all. And this would again make a suitable headline for the newspapers.